How to Light a Campfire in the Rain

Video Transcript

" Hi, this is Bruce Lessels from Zoar Outdoor on behalf of expertvillage.com. We’re going to talk about making a campfire and taking down a campfire and campfire safety. So one of a camper’s worse nightmare is trying to start a fire in the rain. But there is a trick, if you’re up in the northeastern somewhere there’s a lot of white birch around you can often go and scrounge some birch bark in the woods. This is white birch or paper birch bark works well. Make sure you don’t get the birch bark from a live tree, make sure you take it from a down tree or somewhere that it is on the ground so that you’re not killing the tree where it came from. The way to start a fire with birch bark when its wet is to peel the birch bark, birch bark comes in layers and if you kind of peel it apart carefully you can see that underneath these layers there’s usually a dry layer and birch bark has an oil to it that makes it easy to light. So if you peel it in strips and then take those strips and use those strips just as you would paper or some other fine kindling for starting the fire, it has enough oil in it that even when its wet it will light pretty easily and you can get a good blazing fire going with just birch bark and some kindling or some wet wood. Obviously you’re trying to get the driest wood you can but birch bark gives you that extra head start, it’ll let you get it going even when it’s really soak and wet."